RRND Email Full Text (Scheduled)


  • Nixon Goes Viral

    Source: The American Spectator
    by Caroline Petersen

    “The 37th president is finding an unlikely new audience as Gen Z turns ‘Nixonmaxxing’ into an internet sensation.” (07/26/26)

    https://spectator.org/nixon-goes-viral/

  • Paradise Lost, Government Gained

    Source: Ludwig von Mises Institute
    by George Ford Smith

    “As John Adams wrote to his wife Abigail following a congressional vote for independence on July 2, 1776, ‘[This date] ought to be Solemnized with Pomp and Parade with Shews, Games, Sports, Guns, Bells, Bonfires and Illuminations from one End of this Continent to the other from this Time forward forever more.’ The future father of the Alien and Sedition Acts was justifiably proud and excited. … for those who took the risk of signing the Declaration, it was the document’s affirmation of the individual over government that became the hill they would die on if necessary. Government was a necessary evil, as Paine wrote, but that wouldn’t stop them from somehow putting the people at the top of the food chain.” (07/27/26)

    https://mises.org/mises-wire/paradise-lost-government-gained

  • The Kremlin’s Easy Money Is Gone

    Source: Foreign Policy
    by Agathe Demarais

    “Pity Russian savers. In June, the Russian Finance Ministry announced its support for draft legislation to transfer nearly $40 billion in private pension savings into government coffers. Later that month, Russian Communist Party leader Gennady Zyuganov encouraged President Vladimir Putin to make the most of the almost $1.8 trillion that Russian firms and individuals hold in bank accounts to support state finances. According to Zyuganov’s calculations, ‘that is three state budgets … sitting there and enriching bankers.’ Pondering whether the Russian economy will collapse is in fashion these days—but that may be the wrong question to ask. The better question is which sources of politically affordable money the Kremlin can still tap to finance military expenses while maintaining social stability.” (07/27/26)

    https://archive.is/uWJF4

  • Oman is cozying up to China as US throws Mideast into disarray

    Source: Responsible Statecraft
    by Giorgio Cafiero

    “The war in Iran is pushing smaller states to diversify their great power partnerships — if Washington will let them.” (07/27/26)

    https://responsiblestatecraft.org/china-oman/

  • You Sirs Are the Duplicitous Murderous Failures

    Source: Common Dreams
    by Abby Zimet

    “To date, ‘Emperor Commodus of Covfefe’s’ illegal, disastrous, dim-witted Iran ‘excursion,’ a mangling of ‘incursion’ and global clusterfuck with no clear mission, strategy, end goal or clue, has killed over 3,500 Iranians, many of them women and children, wounded over 26,500, and razed much of that country’s infrastructure, including fresh water sources. At least 18 U.S. troops have been killed, with up to 500 wounded. A quarter of the world’s oil is held hostage across two vital straits, at least 70% of Americans oppose the war, recession-level prices here loom, and rage, especially among Muslim nations, is palpable …” (07/26/26)

    https://www.commondreams.org/further/you-sirs-are-the-duplicitous-murderous-failures

  • Reading a Rising China Through the Wrong Ancient Script

    Source: Libertarian Institute
    by José Niño

    “Western strategists tend to read foreign powers through their own reflection. Having watched Britain, France, Germany, and their own country climb the ladder of empire through conquest and colonies, they assume any ascendant state will reach for the same rungs. Yet imputing European motives to an Asian civilization mistakes a particular history for a universal instinct. China’s rise unfolds inside a geography and a culture that make the sort of quick, broad conquest campaigns that defined European great powers extraordinarily hard to carry out.” (07/27/26)

    https://libertarianinstitute.org/articles/reading-a-rising-china-through-the-wrong-ancient-script

  • The Meaning of Fedorov’s Firing

    Source: The American Conservative
    by Ted Snider & Nicolai N Petro

    “On January 14, 2026, Mykhailo Fedorov was appointed Ukraine’s minister of defense. Just six months later, he was dismissed. One of Fedorov’s principal tasks, bigger even than addressing the shortage of Patriot interceptors, had been reforming his country’s recruitment and mobilization system. But manpower shortages remain a chronic issue …. But the real reason behind his firing may be something else—namely the risk of exposing the popular myth of how Ukraine has turned the tide both in the war and in its internal fight against domestic corruption.” (07/27/26)

    https://www.theamericanconservative.com/the-meaning-of-fedorovs-firing/

  • Data Centers Aren’t the Problem. Scarcity Politics Is.

    Source: Townhall
    by Jen Springman

    “The future is arriving, and America is entering a new infrastructure age. Much of the political class is succumbing to a familiar temptation: slow it down by stoking fear of the unknown and imagining worst-case scenarios without acknowledging the benefits. Nowhere is this clearer than with data centers.” (07/27/26)

    https://townhall.com/columnists/jen-springman/2026/07/27/data-centers-arent-the-problem-scarcity-politics-is-n2680140

  • It’s Time to Use the Strait of Hormuz to Demilitarize the Persian Gulf

    Source: exile in happy valley
    by Nicky Reid

    “Even with much of their leadership and infrastructure decapitated over the last several months, the skeleton crew that remains of the Islamic Republic continues to maintain a slight upper hand over their colossal foes simply by using the Strait of Hormuz to create a heavy economic price for an oil-dependent globalized economy actively colluding with American imperialism and Israeli genocide. This is the only reason why Donald Trump pretends to play ceasefire on-and-off like a psychotic game of red-light-green-light. That rapist and his cuckholds in Tel Aviv are attempting to feign diplomacy just long enough to keep the world economy from imploding, at least until after the midterms, but those already desperate acts have been badly botched by an unexpected third party in the Persian Gulf named Oman.” (07/26/26)

    https://exileinhappyvalley.blogspot.com/2026/07/its-time-to-use-strait-of-hormuz-to.html

  • The perils of these international law things

    Source: Adam Smith Institute
    by Tim Worstall

    “There are things in international law that we might not, in fact, desire to do. As we can see with this argument about Saudi Arabia and an enrichment plant. A straight reading of that international law insists that not only may they we should, in fact, be helping. There’s going to be an awful lot of smoke blowing, argument and shifty looks as people try to weasel a way out of obeying international law. Or argue that that should happen. Please note, we have no position at all on whether Saudi should gain an enrichment plant or not. Rather, if we can all decide that, y’know, this international law isn’t quite all it’s cracked up to be and we’d rather not have to obey it for practical reasons then, well, doesn’t that open up some vast number of interesting issues?” (07/26/26)

    https://www.adamsmith.org/blog/the-perils-of-these-international-law-things

  • How the modern plea bargain undercuts the constitutional right to a jury trial

    Source: The Hill
    by Matthew T Martens

    “Having experienced the dangers of judge-controlled tribunals, the Founders were determined to preserve the jury as a cornerstone of American justice. But when it comes to denying Americans the right to a jury trial, King George III could not hold a candle to modern American prosecutors. Today, approximately 95 percent of criminal cases in the United States are resolved through guilty pleas rather than trials. In so-called plea bargaining, prosecutors threaten unduly severe sentences for those defendants who dare go to trial or offer unduly lenient sentences for dangerous offenders looking to avoid responsibility. The result is the virtual elimination of criminal trials of any sort, jury or judge. How did this transformation occur? The short answer is that the Supreme Court let it happen, caving to Richard Nixon’s ‘law and order’ agenda.” (07/26/26)

    https://thehill.com/opinion/judiciary/5986854-jury-trials-plea-bargaining-crisis/

  • Zohran Mamdani’s New Kids on the Block

    Source: The American Prospect
    by Harold Meyerson

    “Not only are Black people losing political power at the hands of a hostile Supreme Court; they are also losing majority or plurality status in any number of big cities, as the in-migration of Latinos, which dwarfs that of gentrifying whites, transforms once heavily Black neighborhoods. In Los Angeles, the South-of-the-I-10-Freeway neighborhoods that for decades sent three Black representatives to the U.S. House, are now overwhelmingly Latino. For this reason, paradoxically, it may be that the kind of voting we’ve seen from the Mamdani electoral base will turn out to be the best guarantor of Black elected officials. Whatever allegations may be made against America’s new new left, they don’t include voting based on race.” (07/27/26)

    https://prospect.org/2026/07/27/zohran-mamdani-black-latino-voters-carmine-desapio/

  • How Trump’s Tariffs Undermine US Trustworthiness and Credibility—and What Can Be Done to Stop it

    Source: The Volokh Conspiracy
    by Ilya Somin

    “If complete abolition of discretionary tariffs is impossible, Congress could at least reform any remaining delegations of tariff authority to 1) confine them to a narrow set of circumstances, and 2) eliminate judicial deference to executive determinations that the required circumstances actually exist. Make the government bear the burden of proof. Even if all this were done, a malicious, ignorant, or stupid president could still try to impose illegal tariffs. But businesses and trading partners could confident that his efforts would have no legal effect, and would be swiftly invalidated by courts.” (07/26/26)

    https://reason.com/volokh/2026/07/26/how-trumps-tariffs-undermine-us-trustworthiness-and-credibility-and-what-can-be-done-to-stop-it/